


Focus

by songspinner9



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Episode Tag, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-28 08:57:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/306159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songspinner9/pseuds/songspinner9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The aftermath of "Exit Wounds" is not something dealt with overnight, and the mind after trauma can act to protect the survivor.  **Spoilers for end of Torchwood season 2**</p>
            </blockquote>





	Focus

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The BBC owns Doctor Who and Torchwood. I'm just dabbling.
> 
> There is a peculiar thing that the human mind does after a traumatic event - it can make one see the events in slow-motion, black and white, and even soft-focus...and that pattern stuck in my mind.

_It's coming back in bits and drabs, he tells Ianto._

When Jack wakes in the flat that first morning after everything that happened, the smell of the coffee brewing in the kitchen takes a few minutes to process and to integrate back into his concept of the world. To replace the scent of dirt and blood and other things with something bitter-scented but wanted. The shining ceramic mug Ianto hands to him and the deep, contrasting color inside it. A few other memories tag alongside that one, reprints of photographs being developed again.

 _Tell me what's missing, Ianto says softly as the sun goes down one night._

Jack casts around for the words. voice just short of shaky. When he was taken...when he was buried, he murmurs against closed fists, he used memories of Ianto and Gwen and Owen and Toshiko. The taste of his lover's coffee and the colour of his eyes, and the way the pitch of his voice goes lower when things get intense. Gwen's smile and her tenacity, Owen's snarky verbal sparring. and sullen rebellion, and his crooked grin, and Toshiko's brilliance amd beauty and her laugh. It had worked on the Valiant for a year that was reversed the rest of the team. This time, it was so, so much longer and things had gotten fuzzy.

 _Sir, I'd appreciate a little help with feeding Myfanwy today._

And when the pteradon glides to a stop in front of the Captain, she tilts her head to the side and makes a soft sound. She knows something's wrong, that something's changed, Jack murmurs, and he takes the chocolate bar from Ianto to give to their flying comrade. With a harsh squawk, the dinosaur takes it, and then in an unusual move that was normally reserved for Ianto, rubs the side of her head against Jack's hand. He stands there for awhile aftter she goes after the meat that gets put out for her, watching her, and Ianto moves efficiently around him without interrupting his apparent need for tight focus. Picture-taking, Ianto says to him, bemused.

 _It's all these specifics that you've lost, on top of the two years missing already and a year only a few of you remember and that is just too much, Ianto guesses shrewdly one afternoon. It stops Torchwood's leader in his tracks._

Confessions come quietly in the dimly-lit room. The older man murmurs that when the other two had gone to investigate a sighting of a Weevil, he had gone into the CCTV archives. He'd sat huddled in front of the screen, occasionally reaching out to touch the images and faces slowly becoming more familiar again. Some things had begun to come back into his mind, he says, like a really old film, scratchy and not really in full color. That was probably good, he'd thought, since some of it was pretty vivid and he wasn't sure he could handle full color and surround sound right away. Soft focus, Jack whispered, and brushed gentle lips over Ianto's eyelids.


End file.
